Cisco

If you want stability, good benefits, flexibility, and management that is more likely to shuffle staff around than fire them, then this is the place.

There is probably no money for fair raises and promotions because you were stupid enough to join Cisco directly, rather than a start-up that got bought out.

Too much critical software is farmed out to contract engineering firms with a questionable quality track record; you may end up constantly cleaning their mess.

Products have long lifetimes, so there is a lot of legacy code and "historical reasons" for poor designs.

Project management is chaotic.

Processes are paperwork-heavy but still do not result in good documentation of software and designs.

Don't count on a wiki or ETG for all innovation. Allow business units some budget for innovative 'mid-term' projects.

Get rid of contractors, reduce the number of operating systems, and carefully consider a single operating system design that can scale over a larger part of the product range. Reduce the number of branches.

Expand in locations where the engineering education system is good, not just India.

Consider the cost of (bad) quality when hiring contractors or full-time engineers without a degree from an IEEE-recognized school.